Despite rocky patch, Conor McGregor and his team unfazed ahead of Floyd Mayweather bout

LAS VEGAS – When you think about Conor McGregor: sports personality, images of Lambourghinis, mink coats and verbal outbursts spring instantly to mind. Yet when you reflect upon Conor McGregor: fighter, there is likely a quiet man dressed in black in the corner of the picture.

John Kavanagh, McGregor’s trainer, has been an ever-present influence on his career, right from his earliest steps into the martial arts world up until Saturday’s $100 million payday against Floyd Mayweather.

McGregor and Kavanagh come across as being inseparable, so much so that the Irishman defied common wisdom by refusing to hire a recognized boxing coach ahead of his showdown with Mayweather, which will be a foray from his typical sphere of mixed martial arts and a headlong dive into the sweet science.

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There may be no fighter/trainer combo in combat sports that is tighter, yet with the greatest challenge of his career approaching, McGregor reflected that their relationship recently suffered a rocky patch, one which made him appreciate its value even more.

By his own admission, McGregor began to believe his own hype in the aftermath of his extraordinary and dramatic 13-second knockout of Jose Aldo in the main event of UFC 194 in December 2015.

Suddenly catapulted into a role as the face of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, McGregor lost his way a little, believing the hype, thinking himself invincible, wallowing in the attention.

“After the Aldo fight, I just became a little above showing up for training,” McGregor said. “It came back and bit me in the ass.”

It was a wild time for the entire team. The effects of McGregor’s newfound superstardom brought focus onto the entire group. Kavanagh was now a big name in his own right, his services more in demand than ever, a book – Win or Learn – on the shelves.

Kavanagh’s time was tight, and McGregor, with publicists, sponsors and television crews all pulling for a piece of him, was in no mood to stick to a tight schedule. The fighter would skip some of Kavanagh’s sessions and arrange his own to fit his hours. There was no drastic rift, but going into McGregor’s attempt to win the lightweight title against Rafael dos Anjos in early 2016, things were different.

Then dos Anjos pulled out less than two weeks before the fight, to be replaced by Nate Diaz. Then Diaz withstood McGregor’s vicious strikes and eventually tapped him out. And then, as he contemplated his firstset back since joining the UFC, McGregor realized he had made a mistake.

“There were so many things going on,” he added. “I had my things, John had his book. We became two entities among ourselves. I was doing my thing. He was doing his thing. It was almost like it wasn’t a real student-teacher relationship anymore. That was my fault. We’d mended that by the rematch.”

Heading into fight week, there seems little chance McGregor will allow things to slip again. He could have gone a different route for fighting Mayweather, with a different type of training set-up and it may not have caused great offence. But having drifted from Kavanagh before, and seen the upshot, he was not minded to do it again.

“It’s been a hell of a journey,” McGregor said. “Keep believing in your ability. Look around everyone at you and celebrate them, don’t think you’ve got to go somewhere else, [like] moving to America. That’s the sign of a weak-minded fighter. I haven’t brought anyone else from the outside in.

“My team stays my team. It’s a different discipline. But fighting is fighting. And we are masters at fighting. We are a different breed at fighting. We understand it clearer and more precise than anyone on planet earth, and that’s what these young fighters have to believe in their roots. That’s the secret to success. Celebrate your surroundings and you will succeed. Don’t, and you’re going away from yourself and you’re just another guy on another guy’s team. You know what I’m saying? You’re just a tourist.”

Kavanagh is known as one of the driving forces behind MMA’s growth in Ireland. His Straight Blast Gym network has franchises all over the country. Bullied as a teenager, Kavanagh gains satisfaction from self-defense programs aimed at helping regular members of the community as much as when his fighters thrive.

As a seemingly impossible task approaches, where McGregor – in his boxing debut – must take on one of the best of all time in Mayweather, Kavanagh is unfazed.

“It is a challenge but challenges are what we are used to,” Kavanagh said. “I am not scared of the unknown.”

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